Wondering About Coaching?

ChristineMarch 20, 2017March 20, 2017Comments Off on Wondering About Coaching?

If you have been feeling a bit lost, a bit ‘out of phase’ or a bit disconnected lately, a coaching session could be just the thing to help set you to rights. I offer empathy, understanding, recognition of your efforts (including gold stars!), collaboration on some ideas for changes and ways to move forward, and guidance on how to revise your inner monologue so it serves you better.

What I WON’T offer is judgement, snappiness, irritation at your approach, or opportunities for you to be mean to yourself. There’s already a ridiculous social story that we all need to buck up and buckle down, that all of our problems are a lack of ‘discipline.’ I think that’s a load of crap. My approach is to help you find a way to talk to yourself that gives you the freedom to change your approaches without being hard on yourself in the meantime.

Basically, I think that most of us give ourselves way too hard a time and when we combine that with the ‘not-enough’ messages of the world around us, we end up feeling kind of stuck. And that’s no fun.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with you (or me). I think that some of our systems aren’t working properly, that we could be more effective in our own lives, that things could be easier and more fun.

I like to use story, empathy, creativity, and kindness to help us find our way to a gentler sort of self-talk.

So, that’s a short description of my philosophy, here are some of the steps we go through in a session:

Whining – Sometimes we do this in advance by email but this is where you let it all out, tell me the things that are frustrating you, the things that you want to tweak. The only rules here are: a) you can’t be mean to yourself, you have to present the info as facts not ‘failures’ b) you can’t worry about giving other people’s perspectives. This isn’t a point where we are trying to be ‘fair’ this is when we’re just getting all the info as YOU experience it out into the open.

Full-On Empathy – This is the point where I tell you all the reasons that your frustrations make sense, the ways the relate to ways other people are experiencing their lives, and the way they contribute to an inner story that is making it hard for you to let them go. There’s no blaming here, there’s just understanding for how you got

Identifying the First Step – Everyone’s lives are complex, and there is never just one thing bothering anyone BUT there is usually one recurring theme or overarching issue that we can work on first. We’ll get to the other things but we can really only do one thing at time and we have to start somewhere!

Strategizing – This is where we look at the things you want to tweak and ways you can tweak them. I am all about finding ways for you to feel okay with making changes and figuring out how to feel better and more effective in your own life.

The Plan – What’s our plan for moving on from this spot? Do you need to do certain things every day? every week? Do you need digital or paper tools? Do you need resources?

Accountability – What do you need from me from here on in? Do you need to check in with me daily? weekly? monthly? Or do you feel like this one session was enough for now?

An actual session is a lot more detailed, of course, and, it changes depending on the nature of your challenges, but that’s the basic outline I follow.

Not so scary or weird, hey?

Well, it can be a little unnerving to stop blaming yourself for things but it feels good once you try it.